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[How have different survival horror games created fear over the genre's complex history? Writer and commentator Nayan Ramachandran examines the diversity of terror in key games such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Condemned.]

Horror games have had an interesting, if not bumpy, past. The last 20 years has seen the genre develop, die suddenly, return to life like a zombie, and escalate to mainstream proportions, surpassing even horror movies as the hair raising entertainment medium of choice.

My first experience with the horror genre was on the PC, with Hugo’s House of Horrors: an adventure game that had its tendrils primarily wrapped around the pillar of horror, no matter the snippets of humor that managed to rear its ugly head.

Since Biohazard’s success in almost every territory (and its revival of a genre that died unceremoniously in the West after the release of the original Alone in the Dark), numerous competitors have tried to copy, emulate and outrun it.

Later still, in hopes of serendipitously stumbling upon a nugget of innovation, developers began to eschew "survival horror" conventions in favor of either the more accessible, or the more obscure.

Each has touched on different elements of fear and terror, sometimes overlapping with each other, and sometimes even being at odds. What truly makes a scary game, though? What have the successful few done to overcome that perilous hurdle that seems to trip up so many?

There are the most obvious ones that all horror buffs cite as the most important agents of fear: the unknown, and frights.

Fear Of The Unknown

Possibly the most obvious horror element, the unknown is used to keep the player guessing and their mind going wild. Often times utilization of only a fraction of the player’s senses can trigger fear. Being visual creatures, humans are most comforted by sight because of our ability to discern objects, action and consequences based on a picture.

As a result, cutting visual stimuli and sticking purely to audio or speech is one of the best ways to keep a player on their toes. Even with weapons, it’s very hard to find what you cannot see, and what you do not know.

Even if visual stimuli is used, limiting or obfuscating the player’s view can enhance the horror in a game, especially if the player sees it for an incredible short time. This can hint both at the difficulty of an upcoming encounter, or even allude to matters earlier in the narrative that the player will soon have to face.

Scared Out Of Your Skin

Then there is the cheap scare. The infamous zombie dog jumping through the window in Biohazard 1 is not just memorable, but one of the hallmarks of the entire series (and perhaps horror itself). These unexpected occurrences, or fright moments, only seem to work once or twice before they become tired and irritating.

Cheap scares work on the weak of heart, but the average horror gamer has cojones of steel and expects monsters to jump out of dark corners. These types of scares are the bottom of the barrel.

Games still use cheap scares at times, but often use it to great effect by dashing a player’s expectations. One particularly memorable example is the original Silent Hill. When the player first visits the elementary school and encounters the lockers, there is a thumping sound coming from a single locker. When you open the locker, a cat jumps out and runs away.

When you return to the locker again in the dark world, the same locker is thumping from within. Whispering “fool me once…” to themselves, the player opens the locker again to find…nothing. The locker is totally empty.

Strangely, this absence of climax was more scary than a monster popping out. At least if a monster had jumped out, there would be a sense of climax and relief, but this lack of climax prolongs the hanging anticipation.

What Are You Waiting For?

This, of course, ties into another great element of horror that people often do not consider: anticipation. The only thing more terrifying than not knowing what to expect around the next corner, is having a vague idea of what it is.

Condemned for Xbox 360 did this masterfully using complex AI, but it’s not always needed. Traveling through the darkness with just a 2×4, the player slinks through the darkness looking for enemies. Through the doorway ahead, a single lamp hangs, illuminating very little of the upcoming hallway.

Just as the player approaches, a figure darts across. There’s no way to know what they’re armed with, or even who they are, but the player knows they are around the corner, waiting to pounce.

Here, there are two schools of thought on horror. In more action-oriented horror games, the enemy would indeed be there, waiting to club the player to death with a lead pipe.

In games that look to play with the player’s emotions, fears and anxiety, the enemy might not be around the corner at all. In fact, it could be a harmless figment of the player’s imagination, created to make the player question and harshly judge everything in the environment.

Dazed And Confused

This is why anticipation goes so well with the element of confusion. Playing with a character’s anticipation is not always entirely effective, especially if it’s consistent. The minute a player catches on to the fact that a given ghost or horrifying denizen of the game is no longer an actual threat, the player’s fears drop away like onion layers.

Killing the vulnerable and unexpecting player after almost Pavlovian levels of forced repetition builds a ruleset of expectations in the player’s mind.

“That enemy does not actually exist. Like every other time, it will just disappear, and I can continue with my game.” Imagine the player’s horror when, instead of disappearing, the creature finally turns towards the player, and slowly begins walking towards them, each tile and plant in the vicinity corroding and shriveling with the creature’s every step.

Suddenly, the player’s known rules and expectations have been dashed, and no amount of quick planning is a match for pure, unadultered panic. This path is most effective in games where the player is armed with very little, or nothing at all. In games like Clock Tower or The Nameless Game/Nanashi no Game, where the main character is a normal, vulnerable character, with no way to fight off enemies permanently. Instead, they have to run for safety or hide.

All that said, horror is still a very personal experience. Each of us has our phobias and insecurities, and a well done horror experience plays upon the most common among us. It’s difficult to create a horror experience that is tailored to each person, but many companies have done a fantastic job of making us want to lock our doors and cry ourselves to sleep. What makes you scared?

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22 Comments

Oh man, I had completely forgotten about Hugo's House. I definitely spent more time wrestling with the text parser than being scared in that one ;)

Hugo really shouldn't be mentioned, other than to show the difference between a horror theme and horror atmosphere. I highly doubt anyone was scared by Hugo, nor do I think the designers intended for anyone to be, despite the title.

To make an obvious point: enemy aesthetics should repulse the player before the actual "threat" can be evaluated; ideally the player should feel a sense of "I don't want that thing near me" before it gets close to enough to prove harmful.

Oh, and the "awful revelation" is one technique that's been left out. This is when the player suddenly puts the mental pieces together and realizes some chilling truth about the game world. It can range from the small scale (subtle environmental clues suggest that a room was actually used for torture) to major plot reveals, as the terrible truth behind the town comes to light.

One thing I quite liked in Dead Space, but which this article only alluded to, was the complete external silence of the no-atmosphere areas. The loss of early-warning audio cues provided me many of the scares I suffered in the game, simply turning around and finding a monster a lot closer than expected.

Another useful technique, one I have never seen replicated except once, is unexpectedly meeting the player's imagination.

In eternal darkness, there is the bathtub scene. I was in the bathroom, and I was thinking of things that could scare me in there (anticipation), one of the thoughts was a bathtub full of blood and water, something you see a lot in suicide scenes in movies. When I approach the tub, BAM! The scene is replicated, and I absolutely freak out. I reflexively reset the game. The only thing worse then something unexpected is being unexpectedly right.

One thing that seems to be missing is the difference in tension through different areas.

This is one of the reasons dead space is only 'scary' for the first half hour (maybe an hour if you adapt slowly). The whole game is really high tension, where something will pop out of airvents anywhere. You pretty mcuh never meet friendlies, or get the chance to relax. While this will definitely keep you on your toes, and stress you out, it won't be 'scary'.

Compare this to a game like Fatal Frame 2, where during significant portions of the game, there is no personal danger. Because of this, when danger pops up, the player is no longer expecting it, and it has a greater impact. This is also more greatly enhanced by the combination of passive ghosts and dangerous ghosts. If a ghost pops up suddenly, it might just be a ghost of a little boy peeking through a window. That uncertainty is important.

(Dead Space, on the other hand, is 100% everything bites you. It doesn't really make you scared... just anal.)

The developer commentary in Left 4 Dead explains how they use image processing techniques to heighten the emotional intensity of certain moments. So, the audio cues that prefigure rushes from the zombie horde are accompanied by an imperceptible sharpening of the visuals.

It's tough to quantify the impact of such subtle cues but the idea is ingenious and the game certainly succeeds in being totally engaging.

I feel this articles is a complete nonsense, either the guy is a lame game player or he has borrowed all this information from some sites and tried to write an article, stop writing all these non sense articles for god sake

Two games that were both paranoia enducing that were not mentioned were; Undying (based on a Clive Barker story) and Aliens vs. Predator 2 playing the Space Marines. Both had an amazing way of making you fear dark corners and never feeling secure no matter where you were. A very be quick or be dead experience.

I really have to add a gem of horror to this: the chase level in CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth. The previous level ended with the main character going to sleep in a hotel that was hinted at to be run by a murderer. The second level starts in the middle of a dream, hearing voices talking amongst themselves. You wake up and notice those voices still talking, and then there's a thump on the door. Now, very quickly the player understands that there's a mob hacking away at his door with an axe. The only way out of the room is through another door to an adjoining room. You sprint there, close the door behind you and notice a hinge-lock to it. Which you lock, of course. For the rest of the level, you are mostly running hectically from a mob with axes and shotguns, by trying to create obstacles for them (locking doors, pushing closets in front of them), all the while you get flashes of you from the POV of something creeping in the dark...
That level was one of the most unique experiences I ever had in a game to date. No other game I can remember made me run from an enemy without first telling me specifically that I had to.

> When you return to the locker again in the dark world, the same locker is thumping from within. Whispering “fool me once…” to themselves, the player opens the locker again to find…nothing. The locker is totally empty.

> Strangely, this absence of climax was more scary than a monster popping out.

There's a Stephen King story where a little kid meets the devil while he's out walking in the woods. The devil tells the kid his mother is lying dead on the kitchen floor at home - an allergic reaction to a bee sting.

The kids runs home and - she's perfectly fine. It's hard to explain why, but this is a dozen times scarier than it should be - really puts you off balance.

Resident Evil is my favorite video game of all time. It hasn't been touched by any other game when you compare scare to scare ratios. I think that one thing tha made this game hugely successful and wasn't touched on in this article is a sense of familiarity with your surroundings. Resident Evil lets you roam around in the same environment for hours and hours giving you access to different parts of the house as the game progresses but you develop a sense of familiarity with the houses halls and the central roomsthat you must traverse over and over. The biggest scares for me came when the rug of familiarity was suddenly yanked out from under my feet unexpectedly, with events such as the zombie dog jumping through the window of that all too familiar hallway and when the previously cleared house is suddenly re-infested with undead. Another big scare factor as you slowly crept up to a never before opened door to confront the unknown evil behind it is the shortage of ammo. You know exactly how many rounds you have left for your scavenged weapons and no idea how many enemies...if any...you will need to confront behind it so that you can search for the next all too valuable puzzle piece, health item or (gasp) ammo! This game will always hold a special place in my heart and remains the one game that I love to go back to over and over again, childishly giggling as now familiar scares approach...

I think Fear Of The Unknown could make person Truly Scary! When we are a child, the audlt would scare us for ghost while no one has seen even a ghost. Human always fear of what they don't know. Though human also has the nature of adventure like I like copy dvd from http://www.copy-dvd.org and convert them to things that I also dont know but, if the "Unknown" could threaten your life, what would you feel?

just wanted to say, the author did not in fact say that alone in the dark killed survival horror. he said it died afterwards. which it did, not DUE TO the game, but because of the genre's perceived illegitimacy for marketing.

but it is very boring to play the same game for years ...i meant the same sieres and it is clones i do nt have to mention the name i do nt wonna make u sad...hahahah funnnny..hopely any any game center reales a horror game with a mode and features that never met in gaming planet example how a bout a game samiliar to the hill have eyes...good idea do nt u agree

fatal frame makes the kids only scare out..cold faer unacceteple graphics..clock tower stupid characters ai..even wroste when developed to huanting ground..that things make the games like that funnnnnnnnyyyy(fatal frame is an enjoble game any it is perfect idea)

just wanted to say, the author did not in fact say that alone in the dark killed survival horror. he said it died afterwards. which it did, not DUE TO the game, but because of the genre's perceived illegitimacy for marketing.

i agree with u but alone in the dark is the father of the real horror games